This is a week of brain on auto-pilot. Mabel still wants mama and papa around all the time, she wants to snuggle up and sleep as close as she can get to us. It's a phase that goes right along with the books {month 5: separation anxiety} but is challenging because it seems so out of place with her usual patient, sunny disposition. These are the stumbling blocks of parenthood.

Rule #1: Don't feel like you know what to expect.

Mabel is also quite infatuated with the kitties these days, constantly trying out her Lennie touch {Special thanks to Adam and Amber for coining the phrase}. Huggie, being the most patient cat in the world, seems oblivious to the pain as long as there is attention involved. He may appear to be on the verge of tears at times, but he purrs himself right through it as we coach Mabel into a kinder, gentler approach to petting .

Since I've been keeping the political banter on the d.l. here's a little tidbit of happy news:

a.k.a. what I would consider the politics of organics on the right track. It's no surprise with all the mega-corporations that have their dirty little hands in organics there have been complaints about "organic" food as an industry (Don't get me started on Miracle Gro Organics, which are not actually organic at all except that they do, in fact, have dirt in them.) From the Cornucopia Institute's site:

Since 2002, when the USDA adopted the federal organic regulations, the agency has been plagued by underfunding and a number of scandals and complaints about its cozy relationship with agribusiness interests and lobbyists.

To briefly describe some of the issues, there wasn't enough supervision for imported crops (China is now a big player in organic farming), and California (another big player) basically had free-range to supervise themselves. As a skeptic of corporate organics, this news gives me a momentary sigh of relief before huffing myself back up over what many gigantic farms accept as acceptable land-raping environmentally friendly practices.